RANSOM CENTER NEWS RELEASE
*****Pforzheimer Lecture to Examine Gutenberg Controversy*****
Bibliographical discoveries seldom make the newspapers, but a recent
revelation by two Princeton University researchers created such
sensation that it was featured in a January 2001 issue of the New
York Times. One of these scholars, Paul Needham, Librarian of the
Scheide Library at Princeton, will deliver the Carl and Lily
Pforzheimer Foundation Lecture on October 25, 2001 at 7:30pm in the
Bass Lecture Hall of The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum on
The University of Texas campus.
Needham's lecture is titled "The Making and Selling of the Gutenberg
Bible." The Ransom Center's copy of the Bible, the first book
printed with movable type, is one of the University's greatest
treasures and is featured in the current exhibition From Gutenberg to
Gone With The Wind: Treasures from the Ransom Center, on display at
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. The Center acquired the
Bible in 1978 from the Pforzheimer Library. In his talk, Needham will
use illustrations from the Ransom Center's Bible to make observations
concerning the book's history and production. The printing of the
Gutenberg Bible, which took place between 1450 and 1455, is shrouded
in obscurity because of the scarcity of written records.
In a talk given in London in late 2000 and a month later in New York,
Dr. Needham and his co-researcher Blaise Aguera y Arcas unveiled the
results of their recent research of the metal type used in Johann
Gutenberg's printing shop. It has long been thought that Gutenberg's
most important invention was the creation of a system of casting
multiple pieces of identical type using hardened punches and a metal
matrix. But in superimposing images of letters from the Gutenberg
Bible and other early printing, the pair found variations in letters
inconsistent with mass production. "Looking at individual pages
carefully, using high-detail digital photography and very clever
mathematical software analysis, what we found is that in this
earliest printing no two letters are absolutely identical in the way
they would have to be if they were all cast from the same matrix,"
Needham remarks. He and Aguera y Arcas have concluded that Gutenberg
must have used a less sophisticated process, such as sand-casting, to
produce the type used in the making of the Bible.
Although they have not yet been formally published, these revelations
immediately created a stir among historians. In addition to
appearing in the Times, the discoveries are soon to be featured on a
BBC television program that may later air in the United States.
The Pforzheimer lecture, on topics related to bibliography and the
history of the book, was created to honor the late Carl H.
Pforzheimer, a prominent New York book collector and philanthropist.
Needham's lecture is free and open to the public.
What: The Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Lecture
When: 7:30 p.m, Thursday, October 25, 2001
Where: Bass Lecture Hall, LBJ Library and Museum, 2313 Red River Street
Entrance: This lecture is free and open to the public.
for more information, please call 512.471.8944, or visit our Web site
at www.hrc.utexas.edu.